


Birch

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 00:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16713406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Prompt: 5 times scully or mulder or both visited melissa's grave? Through season three, with no real thought as to what time of year any of the episodes took place.





	Birch

The first time, there was a frost on the gnarled branches of the tree beside her grave. Its crooked fingers white, clenched with rage. Scully propped the single pink gerbera against the headstone and stood back, hands fisted in pockets. There were so many things she wanted to say but standing there, where her sister would lie forever still, nothing seemed important any more. In life, Melissa was never still. She once told Scully, “My body needs to move. Like, walking is good and everything, but running makes me feel alive. And dancing, Dana. Dancing makes me fucking wild.”

She wished she could have one more party with her sister. One more night where Missy gripped her wrists and pulled her in crazy circles, flying them round and round so their hair streamed behind them until they collapsed in a dizzy, giggling mess on the floor.

***

The second time, Clyde Bruckman’s prophecy rolled around her mind. She remembered Melissa’s tinkle of laughter as she pulled runes from her crimson velvet pouch. “Dana, this is the best letter. Thurisaz. It means the seeing of the future. It’s also protection.”

Scully flipped the stone over and Melissa gasped. “If it’s reversed, it means you aren’t willing to listen to advice and information given, it means having a stubborn mind-set.” Melissa had put her hand on her elbow. “Dana, you’ve got to open the door to see the truth.”

There were tiny buds on the tree, life burgeoning, eternal. The truth hurt.

***

The third time, she’d woken from the nightmare of Mulder shooting Modell. Standing over him pulling the trigger over and over.

The cemetery was busy with mourners dispersing after a service. Women in black, stark against summer colours. Children laughing somehow. Melissa’s tree wore its bright yellow leaves well. Scully listened to its gentle lullaby on the breeze and tried to forget the horror of how easily Mulder put that gun to his temple and squeezed.

Missy told her once that Mulder had been so angry when she was in the coma, dying. “He wouldn’t survive without you, Dana. His whole being is caught up in you now. He wouldn’t let you go. Won’t let you go. He would die for you.”

Now she knew what that felt like, she wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

***

The last time she visited, she’d spent a night on a rock waiting for Mulder’s white whale to appear. She placed a dozen pale cream chrysanthemums on Missy’s grave and crouched at the headstone, running her fingers over the engraved name, as though that might afford her some deeper connection.

“He told me he wanted a peg leg to give him some sort of will to live, Missy. Can you imagine?”

She couldn’t. Mulder, with his supersized empathy and his capacity to believe anything. Needing a prop to get through life. But she could imagine Missy would have understood. Melissa with her ley lines and tarot and auras and past lives would have nodded her head at Mulder’s confession. She had such a vast capacity for open-heartedness, open-mindedness that nothing was too extreme. Not even Mulder.

But Missy was not there anymore. Scully could never be witness to their bickering, their chiding, their one-upmanship.

She dabbed away bitter tears.

As if a dead sister weren’t enough of a burden to bear.

The tree’s yellow fall coat was dripping with rain.

***

This time, he’s behind her.

Last week, she pointed a gun at him, told him she didn’t trust him.

“You’re in on it. You’re one of them. You’re one of the people who abducted me. You put that thing in my neck. You killed my sister!”

Guilt tingles down her spine, cold and watery. It’s like he hears her replaying that line in her head, because his hand folds over her shoulder and she catches a waft of his cologne as his head dips towards her ear.

“It’s a beautiful spot, Scully.” He puts his flowers on the grave. A mixed bunch of blooms in bright colours. She steps to the side and looks at the tree, how its slim silver trunk holds its clutch of branches, reaching up to the frost-bright sky. He stands, black coat swishing around his legs. “When you were sick, Melissa told me you expected more from me.”

She looks up, surprised. Then laughs. “She was always blunt.”

He grins too. “She told me to stop looking for revenge and to start expressing myself more.”

“Oh.”

“I think…I think that’s good life advice,” he says, closing the gap between them.

His gaze is intense, a little like Missy’s when she was trying to get a read on your energy. She looks away. At the tree, stripped bare. His fingers brush hers, wrap around them, warm them.

They stand a while.


End file.
